Jamie (6 page)

Well . . . except for those people he'd cared about. They had confused him. Jamie shook his head. No, he wouldn't think about that or he'd never get this situation figured out.

His thoughts parried back and forth, diffused by a mostly naked woman in his bed. Even knowing that she had hidden motives, his awareness grew more acute with each passing second.

Rather than concentrating on reading her to know how to deflect whatever she might try, he just ... wanted her.

Sexually.

She could be here to expose him, but still he couldn't stop the hot need from flooding his body. He had an erection. He felt primed.

Her hair, now clean and dry, wasn't just red but a deep, shiny titian streaked with gold and brown, brighter than her brownish eyebrows, eyelashes, and pubic hair. Jamie had known she'd be a redhead, but not that her hair would turn him on almost as much as her nudity.

In twisted ropes, her hair hung past her shoulders, one length. Long enough for a ponytail, which he instinctively recognized to be her preferred style. He wanted to touch her hair again, to run his fingers through it. The sensory pleasure a man derived from a woman's hair, sweet and warm and silky, resurged from long-ago memories. He could almost feel it sliding over his chest, tangling in his fingers, brushing his cheek.

She slept like a baby, but still guarded her thoughts. Why?
How?

Right now, with lust as a focus, she seemed harmless enough. But how long would it be before things turned hellish?

Faith made a soft, sleepy sound, and Jamie tensed, struggling with himself—but it was no use. No matter how he'd lived his life in recent years, he was still a man.

With all the same weaknesses.

Surrendering to the inevitable, he pushed out of his chair and stalked on silent feet to the end of the bed. Again, this time from a much different vantage point, he studied Faith.

Breathing hard and fast, he took in the sight of her naked bottom and exposed vulva. Pink and warm. His hands curled into fists, his heart punched hard.

How would it feel to slide inside her, deep and slow, to have her squeezing him, to hear her soft moans and sharp cries of pleasure?

His jaw ached as he ground his teeth together, remembering how she'd felt on his fingers, the tightness of her, the scalding heat.

Standing there, Jamie tortured himself with the sight of her, wanting her but at the same time ... more than a little afraid of her.

As he acknowledged that awful reality, she turned onto her back. The shirt bunched around her waist and he could see her from her navel down to her toes.

God.
Without even realizing it, he pressed a hand to his crotch, trying to ease the painful throb of desire. His vision narrowed and blurred.

She shifted again, sighed—and her sleepy eyes opened. For barely a moment, she stared at the ceiling, acclimating herself to her surroundings before bolting upright.

A moan shimmered from her lips, and she grabbed her head, then swallowed convulsively.

Only embers remained in the fireplace, lending pale light to the dark room. Jamie dropped his hand but didn't move away. He couldn't. “There's water on the nightstand.”

Her gaze clapped onto his. For one startling moment, Jamie thought she might scream. Instead, she visibly collected herself, nodded, and slowly, all the while watching him, pulled the sheet up to cover herself.

“Jamie?” Her voice shivered, not with fear but with uncertainty and embarrassment. She reached for the water glass and drank half before inquiring, “What time is it?”

He shrugged. “Close to morning.”

“I see.” She took another drink and cleared her throat. “Um ... what are you doing?”

“Who are you, Faith?” He hated the near panic in his tone, but couldn't erase it. “Why are you here?”

Tucking her hair behind her ears, she looked away, thinking hard. Then she set the glass aside and scooted up in the bed. Jamie tried to decipher her intentions, tried to glean even a hint of her purpose. But she'd erased her thoughts like a chalkboard, leaving only the dust of ideas behind.

She patted the mattress beside her.

Oh, no. Hell, no.
Jamie didn't move. If he got that close to her—on a damn bed—he'd touch her and he wouldn't be able to stop.

“Please?” Smiling, Faith patted the mattress again. “I'm a friend—”

“I don't have friends.”

Chastising him with a look, she whispered, “Yes, you do, even if they're friends you don't really want.” She tried a smile that felt like a warm lick. “Now come here, Jamie. I'm finally sober again, and after all that sleep, I feel so much better. Let me talk with you. Don't be nervous.”

The masculine side of him rebelled at such a stupid accusation. Nervous? Why the hell should he be nervous?

But now he felt challenged. Faith watched him with a big-eyed innocent look that he didn't buy for a single second. He'd learned at Farmington that innocent looks meant nothing. He'd learned that feigned innocence could mask the most reprehensible plans.

And since Faith wouldn't let him read her ...

She huffed out a breath. “Honest to God, Jamie. I'm harmless.”

“I have great instincts, Faith, as you can imagine.”

She laughed, a light, happy sound that sank into Jamie. “Of course you do. And even though you're not privy to my thoughts, you know you want to sit with me.” Her lashes lowered in coy persuasion. “Trust yourself, if you don't trust me.”

He'd already learned
not
to trust himself, especially with appealing women who pretended to want him.

Another lusty sigh, then: “It's so darn hard to tell, what with your poker face and flat replies, but you sort of seem angry again.” She puckered her lips. “I think I know why.”

And here he'd meant to hide all emotion. But he admitted, in the same deadpan tone, “Because you infuriate me.”

Hopeful, she asked, “And maybe turn you on?”

“No.”

“Jamie,” she cajoled, all playful and singsong. “Not even a little?”

His brows snapped down. “No, damn it.”
Pushy woman.

Faith arched a brow and looked at his crotch, and he actually felt her attention like a gentle stroke on his boner. His breath caught.

“You don't lie well, Jamie, not with the proof there for me to see.” She again patted the bed. “So come on. Let's talk about . . . it.”

It?
She had to be kidding. But Jamie found himself stepping toward her. Stiff-legged, overwrought with caution, he lowered himself beside her.

“Relax,” Faith teased. “Put your legs up. Lean back and get cozy.”

Cozy?
Strangling on an absurd need for physical contact, sexual or otherwise, Jamie swung his legs up onto the bed. But hell, he felt cold and stiff as a corpse, as far from cozy as a body could get.

Faith twisted to face him, treated him to another gentle smile, and put both hands on his shoulders, pressing him back until he rested against the headboard. “There. Isn't that better?”

Better than what?
Jamie just watched her, waiting for ... he didn't know.

Tucking her legs beneath her, she angled toward him and put a hand to her forehead. “Am I feverish, do you think? Or is it just warm in here?”

He didn't touch her. “Both.”

Exasperated, she took his hand and pressed his palm to her forehead. “What do you think?”

He thought he wanted to fuck her long and hard. His fingers opened, sliding into her hair. Just as he'd suspected: warm silk, woman soft. His thighs stiffened. He struggled for control. “You might have a slight fever.”

She turned her cheek into his palm. “You like my hair? Because I never did. Guys make fun of redheads.”

Rather than admit to any of his current obsessions, he speculated aloud. “I don't remember any redheads at the institute.”

“I was a blonde, then. Bleached blond actually, but not like a platinum blond, not Marilyn Monroe blond. More of a golden blond. But I hated messing with it, always touching up my roots and that other stuff women have to do when they dye their hair. And then my situation changed, so like you and your beard, I decided to—”

Jamie smashed his fingers over her mouth. Jesus, God Almighty, she chattered a lot. It wasn't something familiar to him. She made his head spin. “Did I know you as Faith?”

She shook her head, mumbled against his fingers, and he released her mouth. But she pinched her lips together and stayed silent.

Jamie felt his left eye twitching. He quelled the impulse to try another threat, sensing it wouldn't work any better now than it had before. But instead of chattering too, he just waited, staring her down.

She flushed. “All right. But I know this is going to take us down a slippery slope that I'd hoped to put off until later.”

“Later when?”

“I don't know. A day or two?”

A day or ... ?
He glared at her.

“All right, already. I just ... I don't want you to jump to conclusions, okay?”

Too late. His brain had already been leaping around like an Olympic sprinter. “Let's start with the truth, why don't we?”

“Sure.” Scooting a few inches closer until her knee touched his side, Faith brought her breasts perilously close to his shoulder. That distracted Jamie, until she said, “You didn't know my name. There was no reason for you to. I was just a worker bee.”

“Worker bee?”

“You know, fetch and carry, take notes, record findings ... stuff like that.”

Record findings?
Awful possibilities occurred to Jamie, sending acid to churn in his stomach. “A mere worker bee, yet you met me, when I was kept away from everyone else?”

The isolation had been almost unbearable at times. Once they'd moved him to the parapsychology lab, only Professor Kline and his personal assistant—his paramour—had visited Jamie. Of course, Jamie should have known that Delayna was involved with Kline. And he would have, if they hadn't starved him for company to the point that he ignored his own misgivings, the truths that had pounded against his brain. He'd wanted someone to care for him, someone he could give emotion to, and he'd fallen right into their trap.

Kline made sure that he admired Delayna, and what man wouldn't? Especially when she catered to him, sympathized with him, comforted him. They'd deliberately set him up to go through hell, all in the name of science.

Breaking out in a sweat, Jamie still recalled the exact wording of the institute's mission statement:
Striving to improve human conditions through studied and scientific perception of abilities that surpass average restrictions of the human mind.

He'd surpassed restrictions, all right. And barely survived to tell about it.

“Almost
everyone else.”

Jumping at the intrusion of Faith's voice when he'd been so lost in sick memories, Jamie shook his head and faced her. “What did you say?”

“Not everyone was kept away from you.” Faith nervously twisted her hands together. “The things that happened there ... the different tests to validate the extent of remote-viewing accuracy, had to be recorded.”

A strange foreboding unfurled. Before Jamie had left the institute, he'd been the number one remote viewer, with other psychic talents thrown in for devastating scores in every test.

Faith curled her fingers around his arm, and her tension transferred to him through her quivering apprehension. “In your case, there were only a few people who were trusted enough to be privy to the details of the tests run and the end results achieved. You were top secret, Jamie. What they did to you was top secret. But it all still had to be put into a file.”

A layer of ice froze around his heart, settled in his lungs. Shrugging off her hand, Jamie struggled to contain the queasy sense of betrayal. “And you were one of those people?”

“Yes. I was the only other person.”

Ripe with disdain, his gaze roamed over her. “I'm not buying it, Faith.”
He didn't want to buy it.
“You're too young to have any formal training or background that'd make you trustworthy to a cynic like Kline.”

“I'm twenty-seven. A few years younger than you.”

Jamie didn't recall exactly how long ago he'd left Farmington. Too many days and nights had melded together in loneliness, and a man with no agenda, no schedule to keep, never bothered with a calendar. But he knew it had been years upon years. Faith couldn't have been more than nineteen, twenty at most, when she worked for them—and when she'd had a baby.

Jesus, around the time he'd run away, desperate to save his sanity, she'd been pregnant.

But what did it matter? In light of what she'd just told him, he didn't care about her age or what she might have gone through as a young mother alone.

“So who are you, Faith?” There'd been days when he'd cursed his ability to know the inside of other people's brains, when he'd had no choice but to feel their pain, their fears and worries. Now, when he most wished for it, he couldn't fathom a single thought in Faith's head.

The unknown conjured many possibilities and had him simmering with rage. He straightened away from the headboard, his stomach in knots, his heart glacial. “Are you Kline's daughter?”

“
No
.” A visible strain etched Faith's features. Her breath accelerated and she chewed her bottom lip before inching closer. “Kline's daughter disappeared years ago, some say to carry on his work, others say to hide from the disgrace her father caused.”